Every role at Muttville Senior Dog Rescue (MSDR) matters. From the shelter staff who care for their sweet elderly pups each day to the volunteers who show up ready to shower everyone with love, there’s no position more important than the rest.
Except,
of course, the resident cat tester, who clocks in every other week with a mission to discover just how compatible each dog is with cats.
MSDR’s first cat tester, Mustache, was a perfect fit for the job. The fluffy orange cat was used to having dogs around, and he was unfazed when his guardian, Missy Dominguez, carried him into MSDR’s office to meet some of the resident pups.
“Mustache was so confident and so calm,” MSDR wrote on Instagram. “His easy-going energy was ideal for cat testing.”
Mustache excelled on his first day as cat tester. He met several dogs, most of whom didn’t mind having him around, and seemed to develop a strategy that put the pups at ease.
“Most of the time, he would just observe the dogs and let them approach him,” MSDR wrote. “But sometimes, he had opinions about the dogs, and that was OK, too.”
Though he wasn’t a dog himself, Mustache had some things in common with MSDR’s senior residents, like advanced kidney disease. As a hospice foster, each day with Mustache was a triumph for Dominguez — and she didn’t take a single second for granted.
“Three years ago, I promised to give Mustache a home for whatever time he had left,” Dominguez told The Dodo. “It turned out to be one of the best promises I've ever made.”
Mustache’s role as cat tester was a crucial one. According to MSDR’s Patty Stanton, many potential adopters have cats at home, and they’re often curious about how their favorite MSDR pup would feel about that.
“Approximately 40 percent of our applicants have a cat in the household and ask how the dog is with cats,” Stanton told The Dodo.
You can watch Mustache meet MSDR’s pups here:
As expected, most of the pups got along well with Mustache. And everyone quickly developed a fondness for the brave orange cat.
Sadly, Mustache’s time at MSDR was cut short when, after a courageous, years-long battle, the sweet boy passed away from kidney failure. Everyone was devastated, especially Dominguez. And while the team mourned Mustache’s passing, they soon found the perfect cat to take over his role: Little Dude.
Like Mustache, Little Dude had the perfect personality to be a cat tester. He had a few dog siblings at home, whom he was absolutely obsessed with.
“I brought him home at just about 5 weeks old, [and] he was instantly in love with my dog Tinkerbell,” Koreena Walsh, MSDR’s donor engagement officer and Little Dude’s human, told The Dodo. “He's super dog-savvy and reads their body language like a pro. If a dog seems overly interested in him, he'll keep his distance, but if they are relaxed or neutral, he'll get right up to sniff their butt and let them sniff his like a dog!”
You can see Little Dude at work here:
Thanks to Little Dude, many Muttville pups have recently been deemed cat-friendly and subsequently found perfect forever homes. And although Mustache is no longer here to celebrate, his memory continues to live on in his dutiful successor.
“Mustache now has a legacy as the original cat tester, and Little Dude is up for the job,” Stanton said.
